Educational Tech Research

This week, I investigated various educational research reports from different sources, like Common Sense Media and Project Tomorrow's Speak Up. Both focus primarily on the impact of technology and provide much data on adults' and teens' feelings on technology and how it's used.

I was a bit overwhelmed by the wealth of information provided on these reports. There is much to study and review, especially for professionals affiliated with education as we can learn more about our students from these studies. One statistic that surprised me was on Common Sense Media. According to an infographic from September 10, 2018 entitled Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences, more teens said that social media made them feel positive feelings as opposed to negative. For instance, 25% of students said that social media made them feel less lonely whereas 3% said that it made them feel more lonely. This statistic surprised me because I worry that social media is making teens and young adults feel left out when they see their friends "checking in" or posting or sharing pictures from a party that they were not invited to. I had this thought without any concrete research to back myself up, but upon seeing this statistic, it has made me start to think of loneliness on social media differently. It seems as though teens are eager to be on social media to be a part of the group. This observation of course makes sense, but I still wonder if there are some underlying psychological effects that teens are not able to express about social media, but that are still affecting them.

Common Sense Media Infographic Link, September 10, 2018.

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Another statistic, from the same infographic on Common Sense Media, stated that Snapchat is the most popular social media site among teens as of September 2018. This social media site is significantly more popular for this group than Instagram and Facebook. This information did not surprise me since I hear many of my 6th-grade students talk about Snapchat. We have a pumpkin decorating contest at my school each October, and last year, my students decorated the pumpkin with the Snapchat symbol. It was a big Snapchat pumpkin! Facebook, while still pretty popular with current 30-year-olds who got into it when they started college, has lately become more popular among older generations who are trying to connect and stay in touch with others. I am still amazed that my 87-year-old great aunt is on Facebook everyday! She is sharing posts, pictures, and liking everything. Way to go, Aunt Mary!

Snapchat Pumpkin (Promoting Breast Cancer Awareness, too), Personal Photo

Other information on this infographic from Common Sense Media that stood out to me was that 57% of teens feel that social media distracts them from completing important tasks like their school work. This number is higher than what I would expect, but it makes me happy to see that at least many recognize that social media can be distracting. An article, also from Common Sense Media, called What Teens Really Think About Their Social Media Lives, provided useful tips for parents and adults to help teens curb their social media usage by establishing rules and limits.

Another interesting number from the infographic is that between 2012 to 2018, the importance of in-person communication among teens has decreased from 49% to 32%. I have a hunch that this number is going to continue to decrease in the future as newer generations are going to primarily communicate with others digitally and prefer to do that. I notice that with my students, especially with my current class, they prefer to listen to narrated presentations and reflect on them via a slideshow rather than have a live classroom discussion about a topic.

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By reviewing educational technology reports such as these, educators, social workers, and parents can learn more about the current generation of young children and teens and find ways to help them with their use of technology. While it is very important for newer generations to use technology tools to enhance their learning and organization, adults need to reflect if these young individuals are still learning essential skills necessary for life, especially social skills, etc. Adults need to monitor the technology children and teens are viewing and using in order ensure their well-being. At the same, knowing what apps and things interest students can help educators when designing lessons. Maybe something similar to Snapchat could be used in a lesson? Any ideas? More pumpkin decorating? 😃

HyperDocs

In honor of active learning this week, I wanted to share my Tech Ed presentation about HyperDocs from a few weeks ago.

Mapping My Digital Space!

Wow! Mapping a digital space is an awesome exercise. When I was assigned this task, I at first  thought that my map would be a bit scarce in some of the quadrants. As I started going through my apps and bookmarks, I was amazed to see that I have about the same amount in each section. I also noticed that I have come a long way. I tend to be a private person and often hesitate to share too much information digitally; yet, I do have quite a bit in the resident section.

Here is my digital space:

(Personal Photo)
Citations for the images with numbers: Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 4


Digital Resident 

I am definitely a resident with various apps and sites. When I look at these, there are many that fall into either the professional or personal sides of resident. On the professional side, each app is  roughly the same size since I use them all about equally the same. These apps tend to be ones related to communicating. I use G Suite, especially Google Classroom and Gmail to communicate, collaborate, and share information with my colleagues, students and their families. Google Classroom overwhelmed me at first, but now I use it all the time at school to share with students.

I also have a Classroom Weebly page that I use to allow my students to access notes and videos from class to help with studying. I recently started recording myself giving presentations on YouTube for my students to learn.

Dropbox has been wonderful for me to store pictures and files and to then access them on any device. I use Google Drive mostly at work, but I tend to favor Dropbox more, probably since I started using that one first and have so much stored on there already! Nevertheless, I use both cloud-storage services to share files with friends and family, especially with my husband.

In the personal space for resident, one can see that I use Facebook often to interact with others. In terms of other social media sites like Snapchat and Twitter, I do not frequent them too much. I think this is because I am a part of the Facebook generation, and the other social media sites became more popular after Facebook. I have a Snapchat account, but I rarely participate in it. If I want to share photos with someone, I would prefer to do so via a text message or through Google Drive. I would rather have a record of what I send to people since Snapchat deletes pictures after a while.

Before this class, I did not have my own Twitter account, but I have occasionally read some people's tweets. With the PLN assignment, I will be using Twitter more often. At the same time, since I have been blogging more with this class, I have Blogger on the resident side but a bit smaller than some of the others since this is a newer tool for me.

Digital Visitor 

In regards to the apps and sites that I put on the visitor side, these are mostly sites that I use to purchase materials that I need either personally or professionally.

I certainly love Amazon Prime for both school and home! Being able to order certain items online and receive them in 2 days has been a huge time saver! TeachersPayTeachers is a site I visit often. There are so many engaging projects and activities on there that I have used as supplements to the units I am teaching. There are original activities I have created, and my goal is to start selling these on this site sometime soon. By doing so, I will become more of a resident with this site.

 And while I like some of the ideas I have received from Pinterest, the site overwhelms me. I think this is because this site was giving me too many ideas for my wedding, and it all just got to be too much!! I am rather crafty though, so I should start sharing some of my ideas with Pinterest.

Closing Thoughts 

Overall, this mapping activity has made me realize that while I have come a long way in terms of using the digital world to share and interact with others, I seem to use the Internet as a digital tool quite a bit as opposed to a place to grow as an individual. I want to continue to push myself to use it as a way to share with others, especially to benefit myself as a teacher, and I feel that this course has been helping me to move more into this territory.

My brother always said that we cannot shy away from technology. In order to survive, we have to keep up with the new advances. This rings true for me now with this exercise as I need to immerse myself more into these new advancements in order to gain all that they have to offer to help me to learn and grow.

Self-Evaluation of Triple E Framework

Prior to taking this course, I had not heard of any of these technology frameworks like SAMR or TPACK. I plan on showing these to my principal and technology coach at my school as these are important tools that teachers should use to evaluate if their use of technology is effective. Some teachers may feel that as long as they are using some sort of technology in the classroom, then they are good, but they really need to investigate if that particular tool is actually helping the students.

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I investigated the Triple E Framebook this week which focuses on learning goals by evaluating a lesson using the 3 E's (Engage, Enhance, and Extend). Engagement relates to how actively connected  the students are to the material presented via the technology. Enhancement is evaluating if the technology is augmenting the learning by allowing the students to show their understanding in a unique approach that could not have happened without the technology component. Lastly, Extension is how well does the technology in the lesson allow the students to practice and learn skills that they can utilize in their everyday life. There is a Triple E rubric that teachers can use to see if their lesson achieves these learning goals.

Based on this framework, I fall into the Engagement component. I have used and created assignments involving technology, such as WebQuests, that I feel have engaged the students to the material. I have used WebQuests for various lessons where the students would have to explore several sites about a topic and answer questions. Sometimes they would have to watch a video clip as well. These assignments seem to engage the class more than me presenting the information through direct instruction. I have also recorded myself giving a presentation that I have had my students listen to as opposed to me lecturing live to the students. Although I have found these strategies to be engaging for the students since they appear to be more focused, I still have to work on engagement and evaluate myself on other lessons using this framework's rubric.

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In terms of the other two E's: Enhance and Extend, I need to incorporate these more into my lessons using technology. Overall, I need to provide more opportunities for students to create and extend their learning as opposed me feeding them numerous amounts of information. The Triple E website shared a case study of an example 5th-grade lesson about elapsed time that incorporated all the E's. The lesson involved the Iditarod dog sled race where students had to use real data to make predictions, visualize, and analyze information. This lesson really provided an excellent opportunity for students to learn in a way that they could not have without the technology. With practice and by using the learning goals of this framework, I can work on moving my lessons into the Enhance and Extend categories.

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I would enjoy hearing anyone's lesson ideas that meet these learning goals, especially if anyone has great technology ideas for science (earth science) and social studies (ancient history)!